Hurrian: The Language of Urartu

The Languages of Mesopotamia

In ancient times many different communities lived in Mesopotamia, many of them in mountainous areas where they were separated by formidable natural barriers. The result was that many different languages were spoken in the Near East. When trade, livestock transfer, and migration brought these communities speaking different languages into contact with one another, larger communities evolved into city states, which in turn joined in intercity leagues. Eventually, the formation of empires brought some languages to prominence and caused others to die out.

We only have extensive knowledge of the languages used in writing, although a few words from other languages also survived in records. The first piece of writing that we know is in the Sumerian language. Its script was later adopted by the Akkadian language in everyday use. This Semitic language family has always been dominant in the Near East.

In the mountains drawn out in the northestern borderlands of Mesopotamia and beyond, there lived peoples that spoke languages with different backgrounds. The same is true for Egypt and the lands of Africa beyond the deserts to the west. The languages of Dilmun and Magan to the south were never recorded. Beyond them lay Meluhha, whose tongue required the services of an interpreter.

Hurrian

Hurrian is as close as we get to the language of the Urartian people. Speakers of the Hurrian language lived north of the Diyala and east of the Euphrates. They appeared on the upper Khabur as early as the time of the Akkadian Empire and after that spread southward down the Tigris and Zagros foothills into the Diyala and west into the middle Euphrates and Cilicia.

In the mid-2nd millennium, Hurrian was the prominent language of the Mitanni Empire, but after the decline of Mitanni, it lost momentum quickly. The area in which Hurrian was spoken shrank and by the 1st millennium Hurrian speakers could only be found in the foothills of the north. If the language of Urartu was not exactly Hurrian, it was closely related, a part of the Caucasian family, whose many languages are spoken in the small area defined by the Caspian and the Black Sea. Hurrian and Urartian most likely had a common ancestor in the 3rd millennium BC.

The area of Hurrian settlement in the Middle Bronze Age